


Scratched Ragged and Rubbed Raw

by cheesethesecond



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 15:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1514783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheesethesecond/pseuds/cheesethesecond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“How are you gonna sleep tonight,” Bucky asked, letting his head fall back against the wall and closing his eyes, “knowing that a guy who tried to kill you is sleeping in the next room?”</p><p>“Like a baby,” Steve said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scratched Ragged and Rubbed Raw

**Author's Note:**

> This is just an absolute slop bucket of feels, nothing more, and I apologize. There's nothing new here - just straight up hurt/comfort of the sappiest variety, but Bucky needs some hugs, so some hugs I will provide.

In retrospect, Steve should’ve known. He figured the hunt for Bucky would take months, years even, would spread over states and countries. He had a list of places Sam and he would visit, Bucky’s greatest hits, so to speak – their tiny apartment in Brooklyn (or at least the place it once stood); back to Camp Leigh (or, well, what was left of it, and Steve tried hard not to think about it too much, the trail of destruction Bucky’s ghost left in its wake); then, off to Europe, to a former HYDRA compound in Austria, the beginning of the unraveling; a set of rusted train tracks where Steve’s entire world turned inside-out; and onward to Kiev, where they would begin anew, with only a file folder, a trail of bread crumbs, to guide them.

What Steve didn’t expect was to climb to the roof of his building (which was supposed to be off limits to residents, but Steve figured the others didn’t feel as comfortable scaling walls), swing over the edge, and find Bucky sitting not five feet away, feet dangling off the side, hands folded almost serenely in his lap, staring blankly into the distance.

“Jesus,” Steve cursed, toppling over and crab-walking backward a couple of feet, bile rising into his throat. Bucky didn’t move, didn’t flinch; if not for the rise and fall of his chest, Steven wouldn’t think he was breathing. He was wearing a filthy ball cap (a Red Sox cap, of all things, _Buck how could you_ ) and a t-shirt that was at least a size too small, a few holes peppered in the left sleeve, sleek metal shining through. His hair was long and greasy, plastered to the back of his neck, and as Steve pushed himself into a sitting position, he noticed Bucky was missing a shoe.

“That man down there,” Bucky croaked, his voice wrecked ( _from screaming, or lack of use?_ ). Steve lifted himself to his knees, catching, out of the corner of his eye, the silhouette of a hulking man, just out of reach of the street lamp’s illumination.

“He robbed a house last night,” Bucky continued, his jaw tightening. His metal fingers flexed. “House of a young couple, just starting out. I heard her crying, after.”

 Steve swallowed, tried to find his own voice. “That’s, uh,” he stammered, trying to stop his throat from closing up, “that’s terrible. City living has a price.”

“I should’ve killed him,” Bucky murmured, and Steve’s gut went cold. “Reached for a gun, only to realize I didn’t have one.”

“Where’s your gun, Buck?” Steve asked, striving for casual and landing only inches away from terrified.

The corner of Bucky’s mouth twitched; not a smile, just an acknowledgement of irony. “In the Potomac.”

Steve couldn’t hold back a heavy breath of relief. He slumped sideways, letting the roof’s edge hold his weight while his mind raced, coming to a screeching halt every few seconds with a wrenching, useless cry of _Bucky_.

“I have a knife in my boot, though,” Bucky said, bowing his head. “Just so you know.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” Steve said. A cool breeze whipped up around them, and Bucky shivered. “Come inside. Let me get you a sweatshirt, at least.”

Bucky shook his head. “Mission report.”

Steve pulled himself to his feet. “What?”

“Mission report,” Bucky repeated, closing his eyes. “Code name: Patriot Act. Target one: level six. Name: Natalia Alianovna Romanova.” The Russian language rolled off Bucky’s tongue like a song, a prayer. “Target status: Unknown.”

“Bucky,” Steve said, taking a cautious step forward. “You don’t have to – ”

“Target two,” Bucky raised his voice, “level six. Name: Steven Rogers. Target status,” and his blue eyes were piercing, “Unknown.”

Steve sucked in a breath. “Buck.”

“Mission status,” Bucky swallowed, his face pinched. “Failed.”

The silence between them was suffocating. Steve felt that if he moved, something precious would shatter. 

“I’ve never failed a mission,” Bucky said, and Steve saw his hands shaking. “There’s no…expectation for that. No set of responses. They gonna put me back on ice? Wipe me? Let me rot in a cell until the rats come to chew my eyes out?”

“They’re not gonna do any of that,” Steve said. “They’re gone, Buck.”

Bucky laughed, though the sound that came out of his mouth was humorless, hollow. “You don’t know anything.”

 _Cut off one head, two more shall take its place_ , echoed a voice in Steve’s head.

“I know there’s a hot shower and a bowl of soup waiting inside for you.” Steve extended a hand to Bucky, who stared at it, eyes narrowed, as if it might strike him. “If you want it.”

“What if what I want,” Bucky said, slowly, deliberately, to Steve’s hand, “is to kill you?”

“But you closed that file, didn’t you?” Steve asked, trying to keep his hand steady, his tone even. “Ended that mission. Put it on the shelf. Open it back up later, if you want, but you gotta move on to the next one.”

“And what’s the next mission, Captain?”

“Whatever you want it to be.”

Bucky’s eyes fluttered shut, and he took Steve’s hand.

***

In the light of the kitchen, Steve could see that Bucky was filthy. His right hand was nearly black, dirt caked in his fingernails. Streaks of mud covered his face and his right arm, (the surface of his left arm was unnaturally pristine), and he smelled strongly of sitting water and sweat. Steve wished he would’ve cleaned Bucky up before he started eating, but the ravenous look in Bucky’s eyes when they entered the apartment was enough to choke Steve up. He sat across from Bucky at the table, watched Bucky inspect his food thoroughly – bringing his face down to the bowl and taking long whiffs, sticking a finger into the soup and touching a drop to his tongue, analyzing its flavors – before slurping it in heaping spoonfuls, drops flying from his mouth and dribbling down his chin, down his neck, landing sticky on the table.

It was only after Bucky had finished devouring the soup that Steve noticed the trail of rust colored flecks on the carpet. “You hurt?” he asked, sitting up straighter and roving his eyes over Bucky’s body.

Bucky blinked, furrowed his brow like he was thinking seriously about it. “I’m not…sure.”

But Steve had already found the source of the blood: Bucky’s right foot, the shoeless one, had a long gash that began near his big toe and wrapped around, disappearing under the arch. It looked a few days old. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”

“I didn’t…” Bucky shook his head. “I didn’t remember.”

If Steve didn’t know any better, he’d say his asthma was coming back, the way he was suddenly struggling for air every few moments. “Let me fix it up for you, huh?”

Bucky jerked his head in a nod, then leaned back in his chair, his eyelids suddenly heavy, his arms hanging limp at his sides. From exhaustion, Steve wondered, or was Bucky simply turning himself off, turning himself over to be mended, like a faulty part in a machine?

He filled a bowl with warm water as quickly as he could, kneeled next to Bucky’s chair with a soft washcloth and took Bucky’s naked foot into his hands. “Where’d your shoe go, pal?” he asked. Bucky stayed silent.

As carefully as he could, Steve washed the area around the gash, having to refill the bowl three times before the water stayed clear. He dabbed the cut with peroxide, glancing up to see if Bucky flinched. He didn’t. He watched Steve with steady, dull eyes, his face stony. When Bucky’s foot was clean, he dumped the water once more and grabbed a new washcloth before kneeling in front of Bucky again. “Let me see your hands?”

Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “They’re not hurt.”

“I know. I wanna clean ‘em up, though.”

Bucky just stared at him. After a few moments, he gave his right hand over to Steve, who immediately started wiping away the muck, scraping the grime from his nails, scrubbing each finger. He could feel the moment when Bucky’s hands started trembling in earnest. “Now the left?”

Bucky barked a harsh laugh. “It doesn’t need it.”

“Might feel good to wash off a bit, though?”

The laugh died in Bucky’s throat. “No,” he said, “it won’t.”

Steve nodded, tried to smile. “Your face, then? You’re a sight for sore eyes.” He reached out gently, so gently, and rubbed the warm washcloth over Bucky’s cheek. Bucky flinched at the first touch of cotton on his skin. His face was a mess, scratched ragged and rubbed raw, filth caked into every pore. It took Steve a while to get him clean. With each minute that passed, Bucky’s trembling intensified, until Steve thought he might shake right out of his skin.

“Hey, calm down,” Steve said, tossing the rag back into the bowl, the water soiled again. Bucky’s face was pink and puffy; Steve wanted to reach out and stroke his cheek. He settled for resting a hand on Bucky’s knee. “What’s wrong?”

But Bucky was shaking his head back and forth, almost violently, his hands coming up to knock the cap off his head and pull at his hair. “Shit,” he spat, bowing forward and resting his forehead on his knee, where Steve’s hand was still sitting. Bucky’s skin felt abnormally warm; _from fever, or does he run hot,_   _like I do?_

“Buck, you gotta tell me what’s wrong,” Steve murmured, cupping the back of Bucky’s head. Bucky shot up at the touch, knocking the chair over, and backed straight into the wall. “Bucky?”

“You,” Bucky said, taking heaving breaths.

“Do you…know me?”

Bucky whined, low in his throat. “You’re the _only_ thing I know. The only thing in my goddamn head right now. I try to figure out where to go, or, what to do, Jesus, how to put one foot in front of the other, but the only thing I can see, or hear, or, or, think about is _you_. Captain America and some squirrely kid from Brooklyn who was too damn _stupid_ …” Bucky gasped and curled forward, bracing his hands on his knees. “I know who you are. But I have _no_ idea who I’m supposed to be.”

“I know who you are,” Steve said.

“You know who I was.”

“It’s still you, Buck. It’s still you in there somewhere. They couldn’t take that away from you if they tried.”

Bucky shook his head, his eyes deep, wet pools of pain. “The guy you’re looking for? He fell off a train in 1944. He’s not coming back. He couldn't survive the fall.” He choked out a ragged sob and dropped into a squat, covering his face with his hands.

Steve wanted to pull Bucky into his arms, but felt rooted to the spot, paralyzed with indecision and anguish. He let Bucky take deep, steady breaths, let him calm himself down ( _he shouldn’t have to, he shouldn’t_ have _to_ ), before squatting in front of Bucky, trying to catch his gaze. “There’s a spare bedroom. I’ll get you a change of clothes. You can take a shower, if you want, or go straight to bed. Up to you.”

“How are you gonna sleep tonight,” Bucky asked, letting his head fall back against the wall and closing his eyes, “knowing that a guy who tried to kill you is sleeping in the next room?”

“Like a baby,” Steve said.

Well after Bucky disappeared into the guest bedroom, though, Steve sat in the hallway outside his door, listening for rustling, murmuring, wondering if there would be nightmares, wondering something else that he could barely admit to himself, something he shoved to the recesses of his brain as he sat in the silence, straining to hear anything on the other side. Bucky used to snore. Now, Steve couldn’t be sure whether he was alive or dead.

***

The next time Steve opened his eyes, everything was sideways. It was still dark out, and his face felt hot and raw, like he’d been rubbing it against… carpet? He’d been rubbing it against the carpet. He was stretched out on the floor in the hallway, still camped outside of Bucky’s door, but now, a pair of blue eyes blinked back at him. Bucky’s door was open, and Bucky was lying across from him, just inside the spare bedroom, almost like a distorted mirror image of Steve, his head pillowed on his right arm, his left hand curled under his chin. He was blinking slowly at Steve, but he looked alert.

“Hey,” Steve said, his voice thick with sleep.

“Hey,” Bucky whispered.

“Bed’s too soft, huh?”

“Didn’t sleep long, anyway.” Bucky closed his eyes.

“You could’ve woke me up, you know. If you were having trouble sleeping.”

“What’re you gonna do about it?”

“Talk to you. The night’s pretty long to go at it all by your lonesome.”

Bucky’s eyes opened and his gaze roved over Steve’s face, a well of something brimming beneath the surface, desperate to spill over. He seemed to take in each of Steve’s features as if cataloguing them, committing them to memory. “What d’ya wanna talk about?”

Steve’s mouth went dry, and his thoughts went blank. “How are you doing?”

“I’m doing swell, pal,” Bucky said. “Just swell.” Then, unexpectedly, Bucky reached out with his left hand, the gears in his metal arm whirling, and touched the tip of his fingers softly to Steve’s forehead, dragging them down over Steve’s nose and brushing over his eyelids. “Soft,” he murmured, absently. Steve wasn’t sure he knew he’d said it aloud.

“Feel good?” Steve asked, barely above a whisper, not wanting to break whatever spell was cast over the both of them.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Bucky said, sounding stunned.

“Not everything does, buddy,” Steve said, taking Bucky’s hand in his own.

***

He woke up the next morning with Bucky’s hand still tucked in his. The metal fingers were surprisingly limp, and warm to the touch, and Steve found himself stroking his thumb along Bucky’s palm, wondering if he could feel it. Bucky was fast asleep, his face as lined as it was in waking, creased around his eyes and his mouth. Steve gave Bucky’s hand a squeeze and disappeared to the bathroom for a quick shower.

He lost track of time under the spray, the heat rising around him, soothing muscles sore from spending a night on the ground, from being tense for hours on end. He let the hot water run down his face, trying to clear his thoughts, trying to figure out what to do next, when a crash had him leaping out of the shower, tugging on the crumpled clothes from the bathroom floor, nearly knocking a table over in his race through the hallway, and stopping short at the entrance to the living room.

Bucky had pressed himself into the corner of the room, shoulders hunched around his neck, and was scooping a black substance Steve couldn’t identify onto his fingers and smearing it around his eyes. A lamp had fallen and shattered, but Bucky didn’t seem to notice.  His left eye was closed, and tears were leaking out of it, streaking through the blackness.

“Bucky, Bucky, stop,” Steve said, rushing over and reaching out to still Bucky’s hands. “Stop.”

“The mission,” Bucky heaved, wrenching his hands from Steve’s grasp.

“What mission? There’s no mission, Buck.” He spared a glance at the tin in Bucky’s hands. Shoe polish. Steve’s shoe polish, from the cabinet in the hall. “There’s no mission. Bucky, stop, let me see your eye.”

Bucky grunted and threw himself away from Steve. “The _mission_ ,” he said again, and nodded towards the shattered coffee table. Lying in the middle of a pile of glass was Steve’s cell phone. Steve reached for it, swiped the screen, and a text message notification appeared.  The message was from Tony. _Mission report, Cap. Can’t keep any secrets from me. How goes the search for Buckyball?_

“Buck, no,” Steve nearly moaned, “it’s not…it’s not a mission, Tony’s a friend.”

Bucky ignored him, his eyes scanning frantically around the room. “I need a gun.”

“You don’t.”

“You don’t know _anything_ ,” Bucky roared, tossing the tin of shoe polish so hard it embedded itself in the wall.

“Then tell me, Bucky,” Steve pleaded. “Tell me what you need.”

“A _gun_ ,” he growled.

“You don’t need it, Buck,” Steve said, taking a tentative step forward. “You’re not in danger. You’re safe.”

“I need my knife,” Bucky said, trying and failing to peel his left eye open. His hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“There’s no mission,” Steve said, keeping his voice low, steady, as if he was talking to a feral cat. “There’s no mission, Bucky.”

“ _I’m not Bucky_. Stop saying that, stop _saying_ my name, his name, stop, stop, stop, _STOP_ …” And suddenly, Bucky was covering his ears, murmuring under his breath in a language Steve didn’t understand, but recognized, had heard on another tongue, another voice, Natasha’s voice, Bucky’s voice last night. Bucky was speaking Russian.

Steve couldn’t stand the distance between them anymore; he crossed the living room and wrapped an arm around Bucky, steered him towards the kitchen, wet last night’s washcloth as Bucky babbled, and carefully started wiping the shoe polish from Bucky’s face, the sick amalgam of the Winter Soldier’s war mask. “You’re alright, you’re alright, it’s okay,” he said. “It’s all fine. We’ll get you cleaned up.”

Steve rubbed at Bucky’s eyelid, watching the eye moving spastically underneath. Bucky whimpered. “I know it hurts, I know, it’s gonna get better though, I promise, I swear, it’s gonna get better, Buck.”

“Don’t,” Bucky sobbed, his metal hand coming up to squeeze Steve’s arm as he mumbled in Russian again.

“Alright, I won’t, I won’t, I’ll call you whatever the hell you want, I’ll call you James, I’ll call you nothing, anything, I’ll call you _Nancy_ if you want me to, whatever you want.” Bucky’s fingers tightened on Steve’s arm, and Steve couldn’t help but wince, the metal cold, now, and digging into his skin. Bucky’s eyes widened and he fell silent, backing away from Steve with a look of pure horror on his face.

And something within Steve snapped. He’d been tiptoeing around Bucky, trying to be careful, gentle, trying to analyze and scrutinize before taking any action, but that wasn’t how Steve operated. Not anymore. It wasn’t natural, and the uncomfortable tension of it had been floating around the pair of them since Bucky stepped in the door. Steve needed to act, to touch and feel and _do_.

So he shot his arm out and grabbed Bucky’s wrist, yanked Bucky to his chest and wrapped his arms around his neck. Bucky let out a strangled sound from the back of his throat, but instead of pushing Steve away, he took two handfuls of Steve’s shirt and buried his face in Steve’s neck, opened his mouth and _wailed_. His legs gave out, and Steve caught him by the elbows, lowered him to the ground.

Bucky was crying in heaving, rattling sobs, his whole body bucking with the effort. Steve tucked one hand up into his hair, cradling Bucky’s head, the other hand gripping the back of Bucky’s shirt.

“I hurt you,” Bucky said.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Put me back,” Bucky begged through clenched, chattering teeth, “put me back in the ice, start the prep, I can take it, I’ll take it, it hasn’t been too long, it hasn’t, it _hasn’t_ …

“Shhhh,” Steve said, scratching at the back of Bucky’s head, feeling his own eyes well with tears.

“You asked me what I need, I need it, I need it, I need to,” Bucky gasped, gripped Steve tighter, “I need to start over, it’s too much, it’s too much, I don’t know who…what…”

“You don’t need it,” Steve whispered into his ear. “You’re not in this alone. I’m here. I gotcha.”

“You don’t _know_ ,” Bucky said.

“You’re right, I don’t,” Steve said, running his hand down Bucky’s back, up and down, up and down again. “I don’t. But you can tell me. And if you can’t tell me, then we can go sit on the roof and look at the stars, watch the cars and make up stories about the people inside. I can take care of you when you’re not feeling well, and you can take care of me. We can talk about 1942, we can talk about 2014, we can talk about two, three, four years from now, twenty years from now, we can stop talking all together. It’s your call. We’ll figure it out together. Because I know one thing. You’re James Buchanan Barnes. And you don’t know who that is, what that means right now, and that’s fine. Neither do I. But we’ll figure it out. And if we don't, that's fine too. It's fine.”

Bucky was breathing slower now, and he lifted his face from Steve’s neck. Shoe polish was smudged all over his cheeks, his forehead, up into his ear and, undoubtedly, smeared across Steve’s neck. Bucky rubbed at his eye, and Steve’s heart clenched at how young he looked, suddenly. “It’s gonna be like this every day, you know,” he said with shuddering breaths. “Maybe worse.”

“For a while."

“Maybe a long while.”

“Then so be it. I’ll be right here beside you.”

Bucky dropped his head to Steve’s shoulder. “You really gonna call me Nancy?” he asked after a few moments.

Steve laughed, a shocked, happy sound that loosened something in his chest. “You gonna try and kill me again?”

Bucky shrugged, an exhausted lifting and settling of his shoulders. “Maybe.” He cracked a small, tentative smile. “More of a chance if you call me Nancy.”

“I’ll call you whatever you want.”

“Hmm,” Bucky said. “Call me Bucky for now.”

“I knew a guy named Bucky once,” Steve said, pulling back to look in Bucky’s eyes. “He was a real good guy.”

“I’m not such a good guy,” Bucky said, his voice a scrape of raw honesty.

“That’s okay. We’ve all done a few things we’re not proud of.” Steve rubbed the back of Bucky’s neck. “But Bucky’s a good name. Guy with a name like Bucky has a real chance of doing something worth being proud of.”

“Yeah?” Bucky asked with a watery smile. “See, I got this friend I wanna do right by, so I figure that’s a good place to start.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Figure that might be something to be proud of, if I can manage it.”

Steve rested his forehead against Bucky’s. “It sure will be, Buck. It sure will be.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Now with bonus continuation! [This Lonely Hour Before Daybreak](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1577108)


End file.
